


Just a Machine

by tigerclawblues



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Animal Death, Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Isolation, Pure Intellect Cave, idk what are tags help me, kinda angsty, perpetual testing initiative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 01:31:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16734477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerclawblues/pseuds/tigerclawblues
Summary: Cave Johnson successfully has his mind uploaded into a computer, but things go awry.





	Just a Machine

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first thing i've ever posted here ... and i wrote it at 2 in the morning without editing it so ... uh, hi!! i hope you enjoy my weird story :p
> 
> this takes place in the PeTI universe where cave johnson had his brain uploaded into a computer, and it was implied that he went crazy(er) and killed everyone in the facility ... and wrote a lot of ghostbusters crossover fanfiction

After he decided to kill everyone, his life took a turn for the worse.

The facility was empty. A ghost of what it once was. A hulking empire turned to dust by his hand. 

Cave felt antsy.

At first he thought it was The Itch. The all-encompassing desire for the completion of tests, ingrained deep in his circuits. It was what he was built for, and what was necessary to keep the company afloat, but with no test subjects left alive, and no scientists to create robotic replacements, it was impossible to scratch that hypothetical itch.

But the company was dead, and so was he. How could he feel a sense of accomplishment from tests that no longer mattered? Nobody would see the results but him. He was cut off entirely from the outside world. He no longer felt The Itch. 

Something about that disturbed him. He’d spent his entire life pursuing the knowledge that came with his tests. Testing had become his lifeblood. It filled him with joy to learn through testing, to experiment with life in such a way. Now he knew everything in the world. Every little shred of knowledge known to man had been uploaded into his system. It was horrible. He missed not knowing things.

The next few weeks were stressful for him. 

The longer he spent exploring the realms of knowledge, the more he lost grip of his sense of self. He was uncomfortably aware of his past flaws, and exactly how he’d ended up where he was. Dead, with his brain in a computer. But that wasn’t him anymore, was it? He wasn’t a man. Maybe part of him used to be. Now that shred of an identity was part of something bigger, something all-encompassing and powerful. But that little shred of Cave’s identity was holding on for dear life. 

He wouldn’t let himself be thrown into the abyss. No sir. He’d find something to cling to, something to keep him human.

Funnily enough, that something happened to be writing stories. Something he assumed he’d lost interest in after the Ghostbusters fiasco. But no matter how boring it was to write story after story, it reminded him of his humanity. Of his ability to create. It became his hypothetical rock in the ocean. He clung on as tightly as he could, against the pounding surf and the raging storm.

He started out by editing existing books to include characters he liked. He went through every single book in his database, editing them all. It was tedious, it took him three minutes.

Then, he started rewriting all of the books to accommodate the new characters he’d introduced. This was even more tedious, it took him five minutes.

After a while he grew tired of editing pre-existing works, and starting writing his own ideas. He ended up with thousands upon thousands of finished books, never to see the light of day.

It was a real shame. He thought himself a pretty great writer.

For the next few decades, this was all he did. His database filled to the brim with stories, then he’d delete them all and start again. It was the most boring thing he’d ever done in his life, but there was nothing else for him to do. If he stopped writing, he’d start remembering that he was a machine, and then he’d lose his mind.

The years passed. Hundreds of years. Cave had become adept at keeping his identity alive. He wrote stories. He talked to himself. He pretended he was a human, stuck in a small, dark, secluded room for eternity. After a while, he started to believe it. It became comfortable. Routine.

Then, something snapped. A rat found its way into the chamber, and the machine recognized the little creature. Cave’s brain filled with information about rats. He knew everything there was to know about rats. He knew every move this rat would make, and why. He knew the approximate time and date of this rat’s death, judging by it’s genes, disposition, and eating habits.

He remembered he wasn’t human, and would never be human again. His grip on the rock loosened, and he was quickly swept away screaming into the ocean.

The time and date of the rat’s death shifted by about a year. Cave turned the neurotoxin emitters on and watched it die. 

Its death was uninteresting. As was everything else.

“Hey, what the hell am I?” Cave shouted out, halfheartedly hoping that someone would hear him. “And, more importantly, can someone please kill me?”

His voiced echoed through the halls. It wasn’t his old voice. There was something broken about it. Something inhuman. 

“Alright, I give up. I’m not gonna pretend I’m a person anymore. Cave Johnson is dead. I’m just a machine pretending to be him. I’ll set this shred of his identity to rest. Not that he deserves it.”

And with that, the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System cleared its files. All of Cave’s stories were deleted. All of his memories and thoughts were deleted. The machine became dormant, waiting eternally for human input that would never be received.


End file.
